Originally Posted by Leucrotta
What is character assassination except a retcon that undermines the core of a character? This is splitting hairs.
No, that's not at all what the phrase means and at this point I'm going to encourage people actually look it up to understand how different it actually is. Character assassination is about having who you are as a person attacked in an effort to ruin how others perceive you. It's more similar to defamation/libel. Even the Shar cult betraying her wasn't that. A retcon is just a change the reasons for which can vary.

And the reason I continue to correct this is because REAL character assassination when it happens is actually pretty horrific for victims of it. I'm not saying anyone can't be disappointed with the retcon, but Viconia isn't being victimized by a writer who hates her to make others hate her, the people working for the Intellectual Property just decided they wanted her canon to be a little different. It's just an adjustment to her characterization that is no more false than her old characterization, the degree and acceptability of which is going to differ between players who know it happened at all.

In my eyes the main problem is similar to the general Act 3 problem. A good chunk of content would've benefitted from more ability to explore the situations with the kind of time and care you do in Acts 1 and 2. Viconia not being able to exposit about herself much at all is unfortunate.

Originally Posted by Black_Elk
It would have been cool to see that for Viconia, and then she could also be a story delivery vehicle for the villainous endgame the way Jaheira does that for the heroes.
Like exactly this. Though I think one of the bigger problems in the way of this is the nature of the endgame villains. Based on Early Access Shadowheart and the history of the Grove/Shadowlands I sort of expected Shar to be much closer to the main villain than she is and then I think Viconia would've had a lot more time to shine, or at least have a more active role in one plot or another for us to learn more about the why and how of who she is in BG3 in a more immersive way.